The Reading and Language Intervention for Children with Down Syndrome (RLI) offers educators a targeted, evidence-based approach to support the development of reading and language skills in children with Down syndrome aged from 5 years.

I wanted to say an encouraging word to parents who have found that their child with Down syndrome is not making much progress with early reading. I had
read all the advice and tried to work on this with my daughter Kizzy from three-and-half onwards but she showed very little interest and made almost no
progress in matching and recognising words, although she could match enthusiastically in other contexts. She was otherwise a lively and alert little girl
with no medical concerns and good hearing. Seeing other parents succeed with reading with children of a similar age made me feel that I had failed her.

However, we enjoyed looking at books together from the time she was a baby and she also learnt all her letter sounds at nursery before she went to
school.

The good news is that as soon as she was at school (mainstream with full-time support) she took to reading straight away, following the same scheme as
the other children and learning in the same way. She surprised me by making use of phonics from an early stage as well as sight recognition to aid her
reading. Now at six and eleven months she is very much enjoying reading, has started to read by herself for pleasure, and is as successful as many of her
classmates. Her younger brother has just started school and she delights in helping him with 'his' reading.

Maybe I simply wasn't the best teacher for her, but I'm inclined to think that she was just not quite ready and that other activities we did
together were all helping her to access reading as soon as the readiness and the right context came together.

On another matter, I understand the distress some parents feel about seeing news of 'high achievers' with Down syndrome, but I do think you are
right to try to raise expectations. If my children were typically developing I'm sure I'd be the classic competitive mother. But I feel that one of
the important things that my daughter (and now my adopted son) have taught me is that there is so much more to celebrate about a person than where they
come on any kind of scale.

Our Young Down's Group in Norwich recently had the huge pleasure of a visit from Sarah Duffen and her father. It was wonderful to meet Sarah, to
hear that she had shared the driving on the long journey, and to see her having fun with the little ones and chatting to parents. I'm sure I wasn't
the only parent there to be inspired by her and encouraged to have the highest hopes for our much loved children.

Yours sincerely,

Nicola Baxter

Norfolk, UK

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See and Learn Language and Reading is a structured teaching program that is designed to teach children with Down syndrome to talk and to read. The program is evidence-based and easy to use at home and at school.

Designed for children with Down syndrome. Available as apps or printed kits.

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DSE works to improve education and early intervention for children with Down syndrome.
Our research and evidence-based services and resources are helping thousands of young people with Down syndrome to achieve more than ever before.

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